Excessive obesity or obesity diseaseIt is an excessive accumulation of fat in the body and is usually caused by consuming more calories than the body needs. Excess calories are stored in the body as fat tissue. Obesity causes a decrease in health indicators, including a decrease in the average life expectancy and a decrease in the quality of life.
In recent years, obesity rates have been increasing worldwide. Researchers say more than one billion people worldwide, or roughly one in eight, are obese; This means that obesity has become the most common form of malnutrition in almost all countries.
Francesco Branca from the World Health Organization (WHO) and colleagues gathered data from more than 3,600 studies published over the past 35 years to find out how obesity rates between 1990 and 2022 What has changed?. The reviewed studies included approximately 230 million people from 197 countries and, according to the researchers, these samples represent more than 99 percent of the world’s population. The researchers then calculated the participants’ body mass index (BMI) (a statistical measure of how a person’s weight and height compare) to estimate how obesity rates have changed over time.
Obesity has become the most common form of malnutrition in most countries
Surveys showed that during the studied period, the global prevalence rate of obesity among adults aged 20 years and above has more than doubled, and among children and adolescents between 5 and 19 years, it has quadrupled. By 2022, obesity rates among women will have increased in almost 93% of countries. The same was true for men in all but five countries. The increase in the male obesity rate was not observed only in France. Meanwhile, the global rate of underweight has also decreased.
Adult obesity rates have increased the most in the countries of the Middle East, the Caribbean and North Africa. Meanwhile, the greatest increase in obesity among children and adolescents occurred in the countries of Brunei, Chile and the islands of Polynesia, Micronesia and the Caribbean.
Obesity increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, and other health problems. Professor Majid Ezzatia global health researcher from Imperial College London and one of the study’s senior authors, said in a press release.
we should not [کمبود وزن و چاقی] to be considered separately, because the transition from one to the other has occurred very quickly. It is very alarming that the obesity epidemic that was evident in adults in most parts of the world in 1990 is now reflected in school children and adolescents.
– Majid Ezzati
Researchers believe that high-calorie, high-sugar processed foods are largely to blame for the world’s rising obesity rates, as processed foods have become widely available around the world in recent decades. However, they emphasize that individual behaviors such as diet and exercise have and will have little effect on increasing the prevalence of obesity.
Ezzati points out that one of the biggest factors driving the increase in the prevalence of obesity is the limited access and unaffordability of healthy foods. Branca also announced in a press release that governments around the world need to implement policies to make healthy foods and physical activity more accessible and affordable for everyone to effectively prevent and manage obesity.
The findings of the study in The Lancet Journal It has been published.
